Trends in Crop Revenues

The USDA released updated estimates of net farm income for 2014 today and I thought I would reproduce the chart of estimated crop revenues from 2010 to 2014 below:

As you can see, 2012 was the high-water mark for almost all crops over the last five years (2014 is an estimate).  Only fruits and vegetables had greater revenues in years other than 2012.  Although 2014 is estimated to well under 2011-13 numbers for feed crops (primarily corn), the 2014 levels are still higher than 2010 by about 10%.

Soybean sales are slightly lower than 2012-13, but still much higher than 2010 or 11.

I thought I would then show the crop values for California versus Iowa for 2010-2012 (only years of data provided). As you can see, California has the most amount of crop sales, but the substantial majority of these sales are in fruits and vegetables ($24 billion out of total $32 billion crop sales).

For Iowa, total crop sales are about $16 billion and almost all of these sales are feed crops and soybeans.

The USDA issues many reports that have great value to farmer and those who follow the Ag industry.  They sometimes get a knock on some of their reports, but overall, they provide a lot of great value (much better than China reports).